The unsaid real side of NFL's streaming experiment with Chiefs-Dolphins playoff contest: Media Views

NBCUniversal paid $110 million for the rights, an obvious attempt to draw viewers to its Peacock streaming platform that reportedly lost about $3 billion last year. Those who already weren’t subscribers and wanted to watch had to pay a minimum of $5.99 to do so, the cost of a basic subscription that’s good for a month. Company executives hope the newcomers will use that time to sample other programming on the Peacock menu and renew. Longer-term discount deals also were offered in an attempt to boost the customer base.

While there was a lot of chest-thumping by NBCUniversal and the league over the game shattering streaming viewership records, the bottom line is that it averaged about 23 million viewers — including those in the markets of the competing teams, Kansas City and Miami, who were able to watch on the local NBC affiliate. (The NFL wisely requires its games not on “regular” TV to be made available over the air in the home markets.)

But that 23 million was the lowest figure among the six wild-card round games played over the elongated weekend, in which the Steelers-Bills contest was moved from Sunday to Monday afternoon because of weather problems in Buffalo. While Monday was a holiday (Dr. Martin Luther King Day), it is notable that not everyone was off work and that the contest, on CBS, still averaged 8 million more viewers than did the Peacock prime-time presentation. And KC-Miami was a whopping 17 million behind the leader — Packers-Cowboys on Fox late Sunday afternoon.

So the real bottom line is that the streamed-only game was a viewership dud, not a stud. But NFL commissioner Roger Goodell conveniently overlooked that when assessing the results, which stuffed the league’s cash registers while leaving many fans angry.

“We couldn’t be prouder of our partnership with Peacock and are thrilled with the results of the first-ever exclusively live streamed NFL playoff game,” he said in a statement issued by NBC. “To best serve our fans, we need to ensure games are available to them as their viewing habits change and this includes digital distribution as we continue to help shape the future of the sports and entertainment industry.”

Here’s the real story: Yes, viewership patterns are changing as streaming rises and cable/satellite TV declines. No argument there, and more events will make the transition. But NBC’s NFL games already were being streamed on Peacock in addition to being shown over the air. That was the setup all season. So the “we need a playoff game on streaming” mantra is a moot narrative.

This simply was a blatant money grab by the league of the mega-dollars thrown its way by NBCUniversal in its attempt to boost its struggling streaming service. “To best serve our fans,” as Goodell said, would have been to continue the status quo — put the game on NBC and Peacock, per usual. But that would have foiled the plan to push viewers to Peacock.

Along the same path, Amazon averaged 11.9 million viewers this season for its streaming of “Thursday Night Football.” That created a lot of high-fives about the big increase after the package averaged about 9.6 million viewers the year before, the company’s inaugural season with those games. But in 2021, the final year the Thursday schedule was shown over the air (Fox) and on cable (NFL Network), the figure was 16.2 million. So “TNF” was down 4.3 million this season over the last time the games were more widely available.